Incoming college freshmen may lose another year

College classes are to resume this week and next. Yet there hardly are any incoming freshmen enrollees. They’ve mostly only reserved slots for the new free tuitions in state and local universities and colleges.

What most don’t know are two conditions that can bar them entry. One, their high school grade average should be no less than a tough 88 percent. Two, most SUCs and LUCs are unready to accept a deluge of nearly a million new freshmen.

At crunch time, they’d realize the painful truth. Either or both they academically or their preferred SUC/LUC operationally are unqualified for extra government aid.

They’d then try to squeeze their way into the nearest private alternative. Again they might be barred entry there, as enrollment would have ended. They’d have nowhere to go.

The likely outcome is a year wasted by the would-be freshmen. The first products of the K to 12 basic curriculum, they’ve already spent two additional years in elementary and high school. Now they’d have to idle a year at home, or work odd jobs.

There are some smart ones. One in every four Grade 12 graduates already enrolled or at least reserved slots in private tertiary schools. They had the foresight to tweak personal plans with the guidelines for free college tuition starting this school year under new Republic Act 10931. Or they had the cash for reservation fees.

Three in four grads are in for a shock, however. Viewed from another angle, that 75 percent is the drop in usual freshman enrollment in private higher-learning institutions. In the past two years those schools had lost both the freshmen and the teachers who took and taught the new Grades 11 and 12 subjects. After two years of no freshmen, they’re naturally watchful of what this school year 2018-2019 would bring. They’re not about to recruit new instructors at will. The slot reservations are a gauge of how many freshman courses they’d need to offer: Math, Natural and Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities. Once filled up with enrollees, the private schools may no longer accept new freshmen. They’re under strict rules from the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to follow the scholastic calendar.

The CHEd has shortened the college general education syllabus due to higher subjects introduced in Grades 11 and 12. But there still are those basic freshman subjects. Plus, of course, computer literacy.

Private institutions are swift to adopt. Not government schools mired in bureaucratic red tape. The CHEd long had directed the 112 SUCs and 78 LUCs to assess their readiness to take in more freshmen than what they used to two years ago, before K to 12. This means that each department head, say, Languages, Zoology, or Computers, would need to inform college deans for Arts and Letters, Sciences, and so on. The latter would in turn need to report to the SUC/LUC president, who would report to the board, who would report to CHEd.

How many truly have complied can be gleaned from the dismal freshman enrollment so far.

About 1.5 million youths graduated from Grade 12 last April. In 2000-2015 about half-a-million high school grads moved on to college. This year would be different, CHEd commissioner Prospero de Vera said. With the new Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, about 900,000 would strive to avail of free tuitions in SUCs/LUCs.

That doesn’t mean academic standards are to be lowered. CHEd has ordered them to retain the admission and retention qualifications of pre-2015, before K to 12. High school grade must be 85-88 percent, depending on the SUC/LUC; entrance exams may screen out the laggards. Are would-be freshmen paying heed, or are they lured only by the word “free”?

Flop in the free college tuition’s first year could spell doom for the program ideated by the past and enacted by the present administrations.

Rep. Karlo Nograles (Davao City) seemed to have anticipated the problem. Two weeks ago he urged SUCs/LUCs prominently to post in campuses the guidelines and how-to’s of the free tuition program. “This would ensure hitch-free implementation during its all-important first year,” he said. The guidelines should include the usual Implementing Rules and Regulations that go with any new law, this one issued by CHEd in March. “What we want is proper compliance among the beneficiary-students,” Nograles said. “SUCs/LUCs must do everything to guarantee that all the relevant information is passed on to the target beneficiaries.”

As head of the House of Reps appropriations committee, Nograles earlier ensured funding for the heftier state education subsidies. The free tuition became law in late 2017, when the government budget for 2018 already was passed. He got legislators to realign P40 billion for it from the P3.77-trillion expenditure fund. About P16 billion would go to Tertiary Education Subsidy, P7 billion to Technical-Vocational Training, P1 billion for Student Loans, and P16 billion to Free Higher Education. “All eyes are on the maiden implementation,” Nograles said. “For us congressmen with the power of the purse, we will use this first year as basis on how to adjust the budget of the program, for the coming years.”

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459, or The STAR website https://www.philstar.com/columns/134276/gotcha